Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday January 21, 2013 @06:09AM
from the yo-ho-ho dept.

First time accepted submitter norpy writes "The Australian branch of the pirate party has today announced that their registration as a political party has been successful. According to the announcement the party will now turn its attention to selection of candidates and development of policies for the upcoming federal election. 'Organising and validating a membership database to then submit to the AEC for the purposes of registration is a daunting task. Fortunately, we had a team of volunteers who were prepared to spend many weekends ensuring that the list we sent to the AEC was entirely valid, and I thank them for their effort,' said Brendan Molloy, Secretary of Pirate Party Australia."

... the kids running it might realise that adults who have to work for a living have more important things to worry about than whether they can download music and video for free. You know, minor things like healthcare, education, the economy etc etc...

... the kids running it might realise that adults who have to work for a living have more important things to worry about than whether they can download music and video for free. You know, minor things like healthcare, education, the economy etc etc...

By the time healthcare becomes an issue for that generation they'll be able to download pirated plans for medical droids off the internet and print them out on their 3D printers. I'm also pretty sure that by then uploading knowledge directly into your brain will have become a reality. As for 'mainstream economics', these will have been superseded by Warcraft economics and we'll all be able to support ourselves by mining for bitcoins online.

Because there's no difference between any of the candidates and therefore the only reason to vote for ANY of them is for single issue elements.

And if there's a close election where a seat was won or lost by a thousand votes, TPP getting several thousand votes will show where either one can make a difference. If those votes had gone to THEM, they'd have won.

PS why can't you download public domain music and video for free? And where do you get your free interenet access from?

PS why can't you download public domain music and video for free? And where do you get your free interenet access from?

Here [archive.org] is your free public domain library, and you can get free internet access via wi-fi at a lot of places; bars, McDonalds, Laundromats, etc. Often there are private persons who deliberately leave their systems open as well.

Interesting. But I was referring to the Sex Party name. The Pirate Party had more history and reasons to keep the name. The Sex Party often gets written off as a bunch of perverts without even looking at their policies.
Also the point of capturing the attention of apathetic voters has slightly less relevance in Aus, where we have compulsory voting (approx 97% turnout). You only have to be less repulsive than the other parties, you don't have to actually campaign to get the voters out.

Or maybe they are already mature enough to realise it's not about downloading music and video for free but rather about mankinds future.

You know, minor things like freedom, innovation and mankinds future survival in the long run.

All our progress so far has been dependant on refining things already done, and when the patent system stops this rather than helping it might mean that in the future we will get less innovation -> human will devolvle and die.

Please my good sir. Show me one single thing that is purely original and does not consist in 99.999% of public knowledge. The little "originality" you add to something does not give you the right to sequestrate it from public domain, from where it mostly came.

"Show me one single thing that is purely original and does not consist in 99.999% of public knowledge."

Were you born yesterday or what?

Telegraph, Radio, Photography, babbages difference engine, penicillin, probably the fucking wheel were all original ideas in their time with almost NO prior art. And do you seriously think the industrial revolution was purely a linear evolution from horses and carts?

As the OP said, one day you might have an original thought but I won't be holding my breath.

Absolutely nothing of this would be possible without all the mathematics, physics and chemistry developed before, which amounted for most of these "discoveries", as I said. To add even more to my point, all of these inventions you used as examples were about and in the process to be invented by someone else other than their creators when they were patented. The creators just did it a bit faster.

My, what an elegant and sophisticated argument you're presenting there. You've completely convinced me now; I always thought that "standing on the shoulders of giants" sounded unfeasible. I mean, how many giants do you see around these days? New York Giants? They're not going to be able play American Football very well with everyone stood on their shoulders.

You know, when Disney makes a re-spin of "a Christmas carol", they are using something in the public domain to create something "new", that's good, but then they buy the politicians to make sure they never have to give it back to the public domain, that's not good (for anyone except Disney's shareholders, and not them either).

When General Motors patents for example battery technology and uses it, not for doing anything themselves, but suing everybody who tries to make something that's bad.

That's something you inferred yourself, I just said you seem to be protecting the media maffia, I don't know why, that you are paid by them is something you yourself said.

"Grow up" is obviously something you use as an insult when arguments fail.

I'm probably more "grown up" than you (think) both physically and mentally, since I have thought this through and don't think it's about "downloading music for free" that you seem to think it's a question what kind of society we want. A society that rewards invention

"Oh right, I disagree with your point of view so obviously I must be working for The Man."

There you go.

I wasn't boasting about physical prowess, just saying I'm probably more "grown up" than you but in years and mentally. Yelling "Grow up!" is something teenagers do or at least something people without other arguments do.

Let's just see the fact that you havn't argued against any of my points, just tried personal attacks again and again. So, it's quite clear that you don't know what you are talking about and

It hurts knowing valid or invalid vote, the turkeys who get in get 'electoral funding money' of about $2.50 per vote (each house). So I will put the nutter parties first, in the hope some of the electoral funding does NOT come to the majors. I may even have to join, so if challenged, the kook party really does have that many members.

The policy should be to decriminalize a tort, ie copyright, and criminalize shake down operations and computer trespass, privacy violations, transmission of information in bre

In my mind, any software that does not evolve for 5 years is either:
a. complete - so that nobody is hurt by inclusion in a commercial software - the original still exists (anyone stupid enough to use it as sold by a party instead of taking it from the public domain is paying the stupidity tax)
b. dead prematurely - as in "incomplete but with no maintainers" - in which case too small chances to be revived in open source.

So, how's open source movement losing from a copyright reduced to 5 years?

I think RMS forgot all about the fact each year/change/update would be a new copyright since it is a new version, so the only copies going completely public would be the version from 5 years ago. So whatever would be used without the benefit of any return from the company would be 5 years or more old.

Yeah , and the only thing that sucks more is pathetic coalition politics that happens in a lot of europe which means nothing radical or important ever gets done because the governing parties can't agree.

Yeah , and the only thing that sucks more is pathetic coalition politics that happens in a lot of europe which means nothing radical or important ever gets done because the governing parties can't agree.

It's not quite so simple as that. One mathematical definition of political power is the number of winning coalitions a player can join. Given a significant number of parties with none dominant, very small fringe parties can often find themselves in a "kingmaker" position, allowing them to promote more radical policies than the majority of the electorate would favor.

Take the current UK coalition government. The Conservatives have a plurality of seats (306) in the House of Commons, and have two choices for

Troll, maybe,Wasted because narrow focus parties often do deals in order to achieve their narrow goals, and so become a de facto part of the major parties. maybe there should be a rule in parliament that says that a party can't vote on matters for which they don't have a policy? or you may as well just shut your eyes and tick any box on the ballot paper.

There is Gamers 4 Croydon [gamers4croydon.org] that was a political party that was sitting in a few seats in the South Australian election.
They were created to lobby for R18+ rating for video games. They did not get a lot of votes but raising the issue has finally introduced the rating in Australia.

Agreed. Johnny Depp as a creepy old perv lusting after Keira Knightley is hardly a wholesome image.Heath Ledger's portrayal of Ned Kelly on the other hand... The Bushranger Party would have more local resonance if you're seeking icons of murderous thieving subversives.

I try to stay out of these discussions and I'll keep the question neutral but I'm curious what people see as the goal of things like the Pirate Party? Defunding movies, music and software seems counterproductive so what is the solution? If it's a party then it has to have goals? I know the dream is the end of copyrights and the free exchange of all information but it's an unrealistic goal so what is the compromise since in sense the goal of politics is compromise? I figure if we're going to cover the subject yet again there should be more interesting discussion than devolving into the standard "Piracy, good", "Copyright, bad" posts. The goal should be discussing solutions or the whole thread becomes redundant. FYI I'm not trying to troll here it's a legitimate question and an opening to offer sensible options.

It varies based on the country. The German Pirate Party has turned into something of a civil-libertarian party with a focus on technological issues, vaguely like an EFF Party or something. They got a lot of younger people who in previous eras might've voted FDP, a libertarian-ish party that is now associated too much with rich businessmen to get much of the younger liberal vote. Also some ex-Greens moved over for various reasons.

Just a quick FYI, based on history, the fastest growing time in the USA for movies was when there was no copyrights.

Copyrights were enforced on the East Coast but not the the West Coast, so all of the innovators of movie making, like Fox, Metro, Goldwyn, and Mayer(MGM), and many other big names, went to the West Coast and Hollywood came from it.

The Greens are rising in power because the major two are seen as pathetic, and voters are looking for the most sane party to fill this gap. Unfortunately the closest thing we have had to 'sane', is the Greens. While some of their policies are good, they are on a whole batshit crazy and is not acceptable option to most people, so they fall back onto the major two.

With The Pirate Party, if you just get past the name and actually look at the policies, they are not that bad.

Under two-party preferred system, their votes will probably be funnelled to the Greens, which would then be funnelled to Labor. At least it will be a start and show that the major two are falling in popularity.

Hmmm, socialist alliance members have their own parliamentary candidates. My experience of them at uni - those that take 7 years to finish a 3 year degree - they seem far more 'loony left' than Dr Brown.

Nevertheless that Lee Rhiannon from NSW seems out of step with Bandt, Milne and Hanson-Young. "St Bob" reprimanded her at least once for her extremism.

I think a moderately-libertarian party with an IP focus and a "We don't give a shit about that either way" attitude toward divisive issues could do pretty well in the USA right now. With both parties polarizing toward the extreme, moderates really don't have to go. IP reform doesn't sell very well with our national attention span problem, so I'd work the "pirate" angle pretty heavily. Maybe have some signs printed up that say "Scurvey Crew Ahead," get a parrot and you'll be fielding a presidential candidate

Don't worry, no sane Australian will be voting for them.. As an Australian software developer I assure you I'm all for sensible, realistic IP protection. (But no more than is necessary to reward innovation / creativity.)

I'm a creator, and I'm in favor of copyright. That is both for open source projects, where the copyright keeps my work from being stolen, and for proprietary projects, where the copyright keeps my work from being stolen.

I guess we'll let democracy decide.:) Let's just say my IP protections don't feel very threatened by this group of crackpots.

So we should be rewarded in fewer ways? We should only be rewarded if our IP can be protected due to the fact that it can't be copied (e.g. in writing business applications)?

Just as some obvious starts reducing the time period (as the PP proposes), reducing the scope (e.g. fair use much wider, separating so-called moral rights, de-criminialize etc.), reducing the hiding/secrecy (e.g. Hollywood acounting - far too easy to hide massive scams with "IP" so have much stricter transparency rules with any money associated with IP), taxing DRM (artificial scarcity and market manipulation should be paid for) and reducing the penalties (copying is not stealing no matter how much you wish it was). There are many possibilities.

All things which dilute protection of IP, and will make it harder to reward content creators. That's an improvement only for certain people, and only in the short-term. No thanks.

In OZ the "labour party" is spelt "Labor" http://www.alp.org.au/ [alp.org.au] They must be dyslexic! It's supporters don't seem to notice the spelling mistake perhaps it is an indicator of their intelligence.

"Not like the brazen parties of media fame,
With grasping hands astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, downunder beaches shall stand
A mighty party with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lighting, and its name
Party of Pirates. From her beacon website
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild policies command
The ether-bridged harbor that the noosphere frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your hackers, your thieves,
Your anonymous masses y